Volume 5, Issue 25: Proshai, Livushka

"Those "granny remembers" books you bought her when the kids were born? She never touched them."

Jun 22, 2024

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When in doubt, I work. When the world seems out of control, when I am scared, when I am nervous, when I am antsy, when I am feeling as if I am surrounded by despair, I work. My father was an electrician who worked 60-plus hours a week and wouldn’t even turn down overtime on Christmas; my mother was an emergency room nurse famous for taking multiple 12-hours shifts in a row. I am a person raised to believe that the only way through is labor. I never feel more comfortable than when I am writing—when I am making things. When I find an empty space, I try to create something to fill it. One of my favorite Roger Ebert lines is, “The muse visits during the act of creation, not before.” That’s a fancy way of saying, “shut up and get to work.” I always want to make more.

This has been the signature organizing principle of my professional life: Keep making stuff. I do not know any other way. I’ve always just planned on continuing to do that until I died, probably face first on my keyboard. But, as they say, age is undefeated. The synapses don’t quite fire the way they used to.

As mentioned last week, I’ve started working on yet another podcast. (This is now four.) It’s the MLB.com Morning Lineup podcast, in which we wrap up a whole day’s worth of baseball action in 10 minutes or less, every morning. If you like baseball, even just a little, you should subscribe, it’s a good show.

The show runs five days a week, Monday through Friday, and I’m one of a series of rotating co-hosts, alongside Matt Monagan, Mandy Bell and Anthony Castrovince. Throughout the year, I’ll be appearing every Friday morning, though this week I did Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s shows because it was my soccer-crazed son Wynn’s 10th birthday this week, and if I hadn’t taken him to see Messi play in the Copa America on Thursday night, he would have murdered me in my sleep.

The show is an absolute blast to do: It’s a fantastic excuse to just watch baseball all night and make a bunch of jokes. (This week, I got to go on an extended riff about players-only meetings and posit Michael Buble as a semi-permanent floating Mr. Canada.) I have surprised myself with how much I enjoy doing it. It’s basically my homage to the old “Big Show” SportsCenters with Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick; funny, wordy, but also with an abiding love of the sports they document. The producers have given me a lot of freedom to have fun, which is all I really ask of any gig; the whole point of doing this for a living is because it’s more fun than having a real job. I look forward to doing them every single time. (I’ll actually be doing this Monday’s as well, so subscribe.)

But there is one clear downside to watching baseball games all night: It takes all night.

I have never been a person who requires much sleep. I have many people in my life, people I care deeply about, who are the opposite, whose ability to nap is a fundamental aspect of their very being. You leave them alone for a second, and clonk they’re out. I have found these people to be more inherently comfortable with themselves, with their place in the world, with their bodies, with their ability to shut everything down and just knock out for a while, than I have ever been able to approach. I truly believe it’s a commendable quality, healthy, wise, sane, to be able to know when your body needs to shut down and respond accordingly.

I’ve always been a little too much of a man in a hurry for that. There’s just too much to do and see, you know? I spent the first 20-plus years of my life not really going anywhere and not seeing anything new, and I’ve felt a certain obligation, since then, to catch up. I want to go everywhere, I want to try everything: As my late friend Grant Wahl and I used to say, you always want to say “yes, and.” There’s always more to see, more to do, more to try, more to explore. I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this planet, and I want to be alive, alert, awake and enthusiastic for as much of it as I can. People often ask me how I’m able to be so productive, how I’m able to make so much stuff. The answer is simple to the point of absurdity: I’m able to do it because it’s the only thing I want to do. What else am I gonna do, sit around and sleep?

This has served me well in my life. I realized early on in my career that most of the people I met were smarter, more worldly and more talented than I was, so the only way I was going to be able to compete with them would be by making more stuff than they did. As I found a little more success and earned a little more freedom, this allowed me to chase my muses and obsessions, like hosting weekly podcasts on movies or the Cardinals, or writing novels in secret without knowing if they’d ever get published, or just interviewing some of the fascinating people you get to come across in this world. How could you not be energetic about that? Why would you rather sleep?

But the thing is … I am getting older. And this is not so easy anymore.

From 1998-2003, save for a brief four months at a failed dot-com, I worked only night shifts. When I was starting out in journalism, night shifts were the quickest way to get your foot in the door. People in their 20s are less likely to be married, to have children, to have obligations or pressures outside their job itself, and thus a lot more amenable to working unusual hours. At The Sporting News in St. Louis, I worked from 4-12; my first job in New York City, working for The New York Times Online, started at 6 p.m. and ran until 2 a.m. When you work those hours, you end up becoming incredibly close to the people in your office because they’re the only people on your insane schedule. When our shift ended at 2 a.m., we used to always share a cab from midtown Manhattan down to Smalls in the West Village, a jazz club that let you bring in your own alcohol and stayed open all night. There is nothing quite like working a full night’s shift, finishing, and then staying out with your co-workers until the sun comes up. You feel like the only people in the world.

But back then, I could just power through. I’d go back to my apartment, sleep for four hours or so and then wake up and start writing whatever I was writing back then until it was time to get back to work at 6. I never got tired, I never got worn down, I never stopped: There was always more to do, always more to see, always more to make. When I took on a more “normal” schedule upon starting Deadspin in 2005, I basically just steered into those same workaholic tendencies; rather than working a 9-5 shift, I’d work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., then go meet people until 2 a.m., then sleep just enough to get back up and do it again the next day. This worked back then, because I was not 48 years old.

I am now 48 years old. I like to think I have a high amount of energy for a 48-year-old human. I still make a bunch of stuff. I still have enthusiasm for my work. I still write fast and talk fast and work fast, like I always have. But this requires a more delicate balance than it once did. Every action now has an equal and opposite reaction. Gravity has gotten stronger. And one late night can set off a chain reaction that can break down the machine entirely. After two nights of doing that podcast this week, which of course must wait until every West Coast game is over and thus can last past 2 a.m. and combines with a schedule that still requires me to get up and work on everything else I’m working on every morning, I’m an absolute wreck. It’s possible I am hallucinating writing this newsletter this very second.

This is not a complaint: I love doing the podcast and plan on happily doing it the rest of this baseball season and hopefully well into the next one. I’m good at it: It’s very fun. And I do not plan on stopping anything else I’m doing: I want to take my kids to school every morning and write all the pieces I write every week and work on the next book and still keep on saying “Yes, and” like I always have. I have no less vigor for the work. You never know how much time you have left.

But I can’t help but notice that the body, and even the mind, is beginning to, ever so slowly, subtly rebel. And this will only get worse: Time is undefeated. As the years go on, I will not be able to say yes to everything, I will not be able to stay on top of all I need to stay on top of, I will not be able to outwork those more talented than me. I will have to slow down. This is part of getting older—the central part of it. Perhaps this will bring with it perspective, and reflection, and a desire to slow down my brain along with my body, to focus less on work and more on The Things That Are Actually Important, whatever those are. Perhaps this is just part of the maturation process.

Right now, though? Right now I just worry about the day, a day that will be here before I know it, a day that I sometime worry is already here, that I will press the gas pedal, and rather than gun it, the engine will sputter and moan. I have organized my entire professional life around having an endless fount of energy. What happens if I lose that? Who am I without saying yes to everything, without always being able to power through? This is supposed to be part of the natural order of getting older. This is supposed to all come naturally. I am beginning to worry that the more I try to fight it, the harder it’s going to be. At the very least: It’d be nice if these West Coast games would stop going into extra innings.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

My Interview with the Author of Apprentice in Wonderland, New York. This is a fascinating, terrifying book.
This Week’s Five Fascinations, MLB.com. Steven Kwan, the Nationals, the Orioles’ dying rotation, why the Dodgers are still in a better position than the Yankees and, in the wake of Willie Mays’ death, a discussion of who The Greatest Living Baseball Player is.
Overlooked All-Star Candidates, MLB.com. Baseball All-Star fan voters are actually pretty good.
This Week’s Power Rankings, MLB.com. With the Cardinals higher than they have been all season.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we talked about “Inside Out 2,” “Tuesday” and “Fruitvale Station.”

Seeing Red, Bernie and I somehow keep watching the Cardinals win.

Morning Lineup, I did Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Wilco's "A Ghost Is Born" At 20,” Steven Hyden, Evil Speakers. I assume you are already subscribing to Steven Hyden’s newsletter, because you are not a fool, but in case you missed it this week, he wrote about Wilco’s “A Ghost Is Born,” which turns 20 years old this week. Hyden, like me, considers it Wilco’s best album, and he makes a terrific case as to why. This may be the perfect album for introspective Midwesterners.

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CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Don’t Speak (I Came to Make a Bang),” Eagles of Death Metal. I showed Wynn this commercial on the way to the Argentina game Thursday. It’s a truly great soccer ad that already feels from a long bygone age.

It also inspired a very funny parody from The FA.